The identification of IRAS galaxies

We report on the first results of a large-scale program to identify sources in the IRAS Point Source (IRPS) Catalogue. The positions and magnitudes of candidate identifications are obtained from UK Schmidt Telescope J plates, which are measured by the automatic high-speed measuring machine COSMOS: this program is ideally suited to the facilities at ROE. There are 312 IRPS sources in a 300 deg2field centred on the South Galactic Pole (SGP) which are either identified with stars (149) and galaxies (155), or are unidentified (8 ‘empty fields’) down to BJ = 21. The ratio R of far infrared to blue luminosity for our sample of galaxies ranges from about 0.1 to 250. The statistical properties of this sample are discussed here and compared with the infrared and optically selected samples of Soifer et al (1984) and de Jong et al (1984) which both cover a narrower range of R. Plans for follow-up observations and the extension to other fields are briefly described.